At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

Sometimes the sheer vocal
quality of a recording is enough to raise it to excellence even when the
material being sung is on the thin side. That is the case with the latest
King’s Singers CD, a seasonal celebration from Signum Classics that mixes
well-known American carols with some from “the other side of the pond.” The
result is a blend that, if not quite as seamless as the blending of the singing
group itself, is every bit as smooth as a perfectly prepared cup of hot cocoa,
and just as warming. This 16-song release is the final recording featuring
longtime King’s Singers countertenor David Hurley, whose distinctive voice,
high but never shrill, contributed a great deal to the group’s overall sound.
But as always, this is a release in which the whole ensemble, not any
individual singer, is the focus. The exceptional adaptability of the King’s
Singers is shown in the handling here of songs as different as Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and White Christmas, either of which could
easily be a throwaway and neither of which is. The group’s beautiful melding is
apparent in different ways in numbers such as The First Nowell and Silent
Night. Also offered here are It’s
Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Carol of the Bells, It Came Upon the
Midnight Clear, Ding Dong! Merrily on High, Sleigh Ride, The Little Boy That
Santa Claus Forgot, Winter Wonderland, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,
and a curiosity in the form of Frosty vs.
Rudolph: The Re-boot. And if We Wish
You a Merry Christmas is the inevitable final track here, the British
carols In the Bleak Midwinter
(well-known to lovers of the music of Gustav Holst, but likely not to Americans
in general) and Still, Still, Still
provide some unexpected touches in this beautifully presented seasonal
compendium. The King’s Singers simply have a way of bringing joy to the world.

Much more serious, much less
seasonal, and much more of an intellectual experience than an emotionally
visceral one, Michael Nyman’s 1986 chamber opera, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, gets a first-rate
performance from Nashville Opera on a new Naxos CD. Based on the eponymous case
study by Oliver Sacks, and with Sacks himself as one of the three librettists
(with Christopher Rawlence and Michael Morris), this three-singer work explores
what it would be like for music itself to be a lifeline for someone whose
illness deprives the world of visual meaning. This is a rarefied concept and a
more-complex topic than is usual in opera, and Nyman’s approach to the material
is equally cerebral: he uses songs by Robert Schumann as the basis for a series
of variations that collectively represent the mental decline of the character
Dr. P (Matthew Treviño). The
primary song Nyman uses is the seventh from the Dichterliebe cycle, Ich
grolle nicht (“I bear no grudge”), whose association with the topic of the
opera (and the underlying case study) is clear. Because Dr. P is a music
professor, the use of music as a way to reach out to him and a way for him to
understand the world, or at least get by in it, makes sense. Dr. P’s centrality
to the story is maintained throughout, as Mrs. P (Rebecca Sjöwall) and an unnamed-in-the-opera
investigating neurologist (Ryan MacPherson) explore the situation, trying to
make sense of it and find a way to manage it for their own sakes as well as
that of Dr. P. The music is minimalist and, stripped of the stage action, would
not likely be to many listeners’ taste were it not for the fact that its
constant dissolution and re-formation so effectively reproduce Nyman’s imagined
workings of a mind at odds with itself. The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is more melodic than is usual in
minimalism and more dramatic as well, and the story pulls in listeners through
its oddity and emotional implications despite the lack of typical opera-style
drama or melodrama. Few contemporary operas are as conceptually intriguing as
this one, which succeeds in part because of its limited cast and short duration
(under an hour). The Nashville Opera recording under Dean Williamson is a very
fine one, with the clarity of orchestral playing particularly noteworthy – the
music both underlines and provides balance to the lack of certainty of what is
happening in Dr. P’s mind, and it is satisfying (and ultimately understandable)
that music should become a portal of sorts through which Dr. P is able to
enter, or re-enter, the world occupiedby his wife and the neurologist.

A vocal work of broader conceptualization
and considerable historical interest – but limited musical attractiveness – is Passion Week (1923) by Lithuanian-born
Russian (later Soviet) composer Maximilian Steinberg (1883-1946). A co-student
with Igor Stravinsky of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Steinberg never adopted
more-modern compositional techniques and approaches as Stravinsky did, Steinberg’s
music remaining so conservative that even under Soviet dictates, he was able to
continue composing without difficulty – he was already creating the sorts of
works that the authorities favored, and had little trouble adapting to the
requirements of more-nationalistic themes as they were increasingly mandated.
Steinberg remains well-regarded as a pedagogue, but his music is nowadays
little heard, and indeed tends to sound a bit like generic warmed-over
late-Romantic Russian material – although Steinberg was a skilled orchestrator,
and his instrumental use is noteworthy. Passion
Week is a bit of a mystery, having been composed after the Bolshevik
Revolution, at a time when Orthodox Christian works were no longer acceptable
to perform and were not even supposed to be created. The work languished in
Steinberg’s lifetime and for decades thereafter, receiving its world première complete performance as recently
as 2014. The music, not surprisingly, is redolent of Rimsky-Korsakov, who was
not only Steinberg’s teacher but also became his father-in-law (Steinberg’s
Symphony No. 2 of 1909 is titled “In memoriam Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov”). Passion Week also recalls in some ways
the All-Night Vigil of Rachmaninoff
from 1915 – but is even more closely related to Aleksandr Grechaninov’s 1912 Passion Week, composed on 13 Old
Slavonic texts. Steinberg’s work’s text differs from that used by Grechaninov
in ways mainly important to students of Russian Orthodox Christianity.
Grechaninov used texts heard throughout the period of Great Lent; Steinberg
chose only ones directly tied to Holy Week. And unlike Grechaninov, Steinberg
based all but one movement of his work directly on traditional chant – the
foundation of Russian church singing. Steinberg’s work here is less opulent
than in much of his other music, with a degree of mild dissonance and a sense
of objective narration paralleled in the musical material. The Clarion Choir
under Steven Fox performs this nearly hour-long work with sensitivity, style
and a sense of emotional involvement. But the work does not reach out either in
text or in music to an audience beyond that of the Russian Orthodox believers
for whom it was intended. The Naxos recording is quite fine, and certainly
Steinberg’s Passion Week represents a
significant addition to the Russian religious choral repertoire of its time.
But this (+++) release is one of very limited appeal, its extended choral
material of interest to singers, vocal ensembles, and followers of Russian
Orthodoxy and large-scale compositions within its traditions – but not likely
to generate much enthusiasm beyond those groups.

There is also somewhat limited
appeal in a (+++) MSR Classics release called Heaven and Earth—A Duke Ellington Songbook. There is a bit of a
religious connection here, too, with tracks called Come Sunday, Heaven, and Almighty
God Has Those Angels. But this CD is primarily for a secular audience
interested in Ellington’s music as interpreted in what is essentially art-song
format, with soprano Danielle Talamantes and pianist Henry Dehlinger presenting
a dozen Ellington tunes in a variety of arrangements. The disc includes Imagine My Frustration, In a Sentimental
Mood, Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me, Prelude to a Kiss, Don’t Get Around
Much Anymore, Sophisticated Lady, I’m Beginning to See the Light, Solitude
and Meditation – that is, a blend of
highly familiar and somewhat less familiar Ellington, with everything very
wellsung and played if perhaps without
quite as much “swing” as one might wish for in a recording blending
jazz-originating material with arrangements and performances drawn from more of
a traditional classical vocal recital. “Crossover” music is nothing new
anymore, but this is more of a crossover performance: the music itself comes
firmly from the jazz world. The settings – by Larry Ham, Caren Levine, Marvin
Mills and Dehlinger – are all nicely done, and Talamantes looks for and often
finds considerable emotional resonance in this music. But her voice is too
effectively operatic for these ultimately rather slight tunes: she often sounds
as if she is holding back from the sort of full-throated expressiveness that
opera and other classical forms demand. There is pleasant camaraderie, a kind
of mutual respect and enjoyment, in her musical interactions with Dehlinger:
the best part of this recording is the sense it gives of listening in at an
intimate friends-only gathering of Ellington aficionados. Strictly on a musical
basis, though, the material is rather thin – an enjoyable aural sojourn for
Ellington fans, but not one likely to be preferred to the singing of his music
by less vocally skilled but more idiomatically adept performers than
Talamantes.